No Escape Read online

  Hilary Norman and The Murder Room

  ››› This title is part of The Murder Room, our series dedicated to making available out-of-print or hard-to-find titles by classic crime writers.

  Crime fiction has always held up a mirror to society. The Victorians were fascinated by sensational murder and the emerging science of detection; now we are obsessed with the forensic detail of violent death. And no other genre has so captivated and enthralled readers.

  Vast troves of classic crime writing have for a long time been unavailable to all but the most dedicated frequenters of second-hand bookshops. The advent of digital publishing means that we are now able to bring you the backlists of a huge range of titles by classic and contemporary crime writers, some of which have been out of print for decades.

  From the genteel amateur private eyes of the Golden Age and the femmes fatales of pulp fiction, to the morally ambiguous hard-boiled detectives of mid twentieth-century America and their descendants who walk our twenty-first century streets, The Murder Room has it all. ›››

  The Murder Room

  Where Criminal Minds Meet

  themurderroom.com

  No Escape

  Hilary Norman

  Contents

  Cover

  The Murder Room Introduction

  Title page

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Chapter Eighty

  Chapter Eighty-One

  Chapter Eighty-Two

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  Chapter Eighty-Four

  Chapter Eighty-Five

  Chapter Eighty-Six

  Chapter Eighty-Seven

  Chapter Eighty-Eight

  Chapter Eighty-Nine

  Chapter Ninety

  Chapter Ninety-One

  Chapter Ninety-Two

  Chapter Ninety-Three

  Chapter Ninety-Four

  Chapter Ninety-Five

  Chapter Ninety-Six

  Chapter Ninety-Seven

  Chapter Ninety-Eight

  Chapter Ninety-Nine

  Chapter One Hundred

  Chapter One Hundred One

  Chapter One Hundred Two

  Chapter One Hundred Three

  Chapter One Hundred Four

  Chapter One Hundred Five

  Chapter One Hundred Six

  Chapter One Hundred Seven

  Chapter One Hundred Eight

  Chapter One Hundred Nine

  Chapter One Hundred Ten

  Chapter One Hundred Eleven

  Chapter One Hundred Twelve

  Chapter One Hundred Thirteen

  Chapter One Hundred Fourteen

  Chapter One Hundred Fifteen

  Chapter One Hundred Sixteen

  Chapter One Hundred Seventeen

  Chapter One Hundred Eighteen

  Chapter One Hundred Nineteen

  Chapter One Hundred Twenty

  Chapter One Hundred Twenty-One

  Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Two

  Outro

  By Hilary Norman

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  About the author

  Copyright page

  Case No. 5/040573

  BOLSOVER, L.F.

  Study/Review

  Pending

  Action

  Resolved

  Chapter One

  All through the last week of February, the body lay beneath a pile of sacking on the floor of a neglected shed on an allotment near Claris Green in the London borough of Barnet. Less than a year ago, this tiny plot of land had boasted plums, tomatoes, strawberries and seasonal flowers, but then the allotment holder had died, and in the lengthy wait for a new tenant the plants had withered, become choked by weeds and threaded with cobwebs, and one wall of the shed had been smashed by vandals using it for sport.

  It being late winter, with no new holder yet in prospect, the body had thus far remained undiscovered for eight days, though one large, smooth, speckled pebble, chucked through the broken planks of wood by a hooligan with time on his hands, now rested on the sacking directly over the dead woman’s left thigh.

  The discovery, when it was finally made, would horrify and sicken whoever had the misfortune to stumble upon it. However advanced the state of decomposition of the corpse by then, identification would swiftly be made, for Lynne Frances Bolsover had been reported as a missing person by her husband seven days before, and with no reported sightings since then or usage of her VISA card, concern for her safety had begun to mount. Besides which, while Mrs Bolsover’s black leather Marks & Spencer handbag (placed by her killer in a wheelie bin on Franklin Road, less than a mile from the allotment) would never be found, Lynne was still dressed in her Next red pullover and blue jeans with a Siamese cat patch on their right back pocket, and those clothes, supported by the missing woman’s dental records, would smooth the way for the police.

  Though not, of course, the Bolsover family.

  The pathologist would, in due course, confirm that the twenty-nine-year-old wife of John Bolsover and mother of Kylie, aged six, and Alex, aged four, had died from a massive brain haemorrhage after her skull had been fractured by three blows to her head. The murder in
vestigation already launched by the Metropolitan Police’s Area Major Investigation Team, North West, would pick up a full head of steam – and would, in all probability, be rapidly solved. For the AMIT NW detectives would soon learn that, hoping to alleviate Lynne’s prolonged depression after an abortion a year earlier, her GP, Dr Deirdre Miller, had recently prescribed Prozac; that staff at a health shop half a mile from the Bolsovers’ semi-detached had often supplied the deceased with arnica for bruising; that, according to Pam Wakefield (Lynne’s sister) and Valerie Golding (her next-door-neighbour), Lynne had frequently been bullied, yelled at, and almost certainly hit by John Bolsover, her husband; and that – this from sister Pam – it had been John who had insisted on the termination that had so depressed his wife.

  It was likely that Bolsover would be interviewed several times before being arrested and charged with her murder.

  Though he would never confess.

  Because he was not guilty.

  Chapter Two

  Everyone said, regularly, that Lizzie Piper Wade was a very lucky woman.

  ‘Except for poor Jack, of course—’ those who knew about her middle child’s Duchenne muscular dystrophy would quickly add ‘—though God knows even that has to be a little easier for her than for other women.’

  ‘Other women’ meaning those with the misfortune not to be married to Christopher Wade.

  Life had taught Lizzie about counting blessings, and she had learned over the years, despite the cruelty of Jack’s diagnosis, to be grateful for many things. She was grateful for Jack’s courage and humour, for his intelligence and self-esteem, and, perhaps most vitally, for his unshakable confidence in his family’s great love for him. She was boundlessly grateful that twelve-year-old Edward and Sophie, seven in March, were both healthy – though time and testing, perhaps in her teens, would yet tell whether or not Sophie was a carrier of the gene defect that had afflicted ten-year-old Jack.

  She was grateful for her work.

  ‘How important—’ a journalist interviewing her for one of the Saturday supplements had asked her a year ago ‘—would you say your career is to you, in the general scheme of things?’

  ‘I know I’m lucky to have it,’ Lizzie had answered. ‘Lucky to be able to cook and eat and drink, and write about it and get paid for it.’

  She’d gone on, as she usually did, about her good fortune, saying that though she did actually work fairly hard, it was sometimes difficult to think of what she did as real ‘work’. But she had not given the answer that lay uppermost in her mind: the most truthful answer.

  Work keeps me sane.

  The journalist, knowing about Jack’s condition, would probably have assumed that Lizzie was thinking of that. But Lizzie had not spoken the words, neither to that person nor to any other. Not even to Angela Piper, her mother, nor to Gilly Spence, who helped with Jack and the other children and some of the housework – making Gilly another blessing.

  Work keeps me sane.

  None of them would have truly understood that statement. All of them would have believed that if Lizzie’s emotional strength did occasionally teeter a bit, it had to be because of Jack and the constant strain of balancing priorities – and even then, taking all that into account, they would still silently have added a waiver to their very real empathy: Easier for Lizzie than most.

  Because all her family, friends and colleagues, and anyone who’d read about her in women’s magazines or tabloids, felt much the same way about one pivotal aspect of her life; that Lizzie’s greatest, head-and-shoulders-above-the-rest, blessing (especially, some privately thought, since though she was a nice enough-looking blue-eyed blonde, she was no great beauty) was that she had Christopher for her husband.

  Christopher Edward Julian Wade.

  The gifted, renowned, attractive plastic surgeon who regularly donated his services to the needy in European and Third World countries, as well as being the founder and lynchpin of HANDS, a charitable institution dedicated to the physical and psychological aid of disfigured men, women and children.

  Dubbed ‘Saint Christopher’ by several tabloids.

  The Wades divided their family life between a large, early Victorian, stucco-fronted house on the Thames near Marlow in Buckinghamshire, and a garden flat in London’s Holland Park; both homes having been virtually gutted and reconstructed some years back in order to be able to accommodate Jack’s special needs – ramps, a stairlift in the house, widened doorways, modified bathrooms – as they arose, as his strength and abilities gradually waned, and both also possessing working kitchens for Lizzie and studies for her and Christopher.

  Add the blessing of wealth.

  Lizzie had long ago lost count of how many fans had written to tell her how much they envied her – not so much because of her bestselling books and regular appearances as Lizzie Piper in cookery slots on This Morning and on the Food and Drink Channel, but because of her life with the fabulous Christopher.

  Because none of them knew the truth about him.

  They all knew only what Lizzie wished them to know, for knowing more would serve no purpose. She would not – could not – contemplate leaving Christopher, no matter what, because of her children. Because of Jack. Because, flawed as her husband was, he was also the most genuinely tender father imaginable.

  And because Jack worshipped him.

  So, for at least as long as Jack lived (and although Lizzie knew the statistics, knew that despite the hopes for gene and other therapies of the future, her beloved son might still be lucky to survive past his teens or early twenties, she seldom permitted herself to contemplate his death), Lizzie would tell no one. Would allow her family and the world beyond to go on believing, wholeheartedly, in the semi-myth of ‘Saint Christopher’ Wade.

  For Jack.

  Chapter Three

  Some people found it hard to trust Robin Allbeury.

  A prosperous, successful, Labour-supporting solicitor with offices in Bedford Row and a sumptuous penthouse home in Shad Tower, a sleek building on Bermondsey Riverside near St Saviour’s Dock and Butler’s Wharf on the south-east side of Tower Bridge, Allbeury was, on the whole, a contented man.

  An elegant bachelor of forty-two, not handsome but undeniably attractive, with dark hair threading nicely with silver, and warm brown eyes, he supported the arts but, in his personal taste rankings, placed cinema above theatre, thrillers above literature, jazz above opera. Silence above jazz. Quiet dinners above parties. Friendships with women above men. And his single status above marriage.

  ‘You don’t know what you’re missing,’ David Lerman, one of his partners, blissfully happy with his second wife, had told him more than once. ‘Julia’s transformed my life.’

  ‘Julia’s wonderful,’ Allbeury had agreed, ‘but you were a miserable sod before you met her, whereas I’m a happy man.’

  ‘So you claim.’ Lerman had remained dubious.

  ‘I do.’ Allbeury had smiled.

  His speciality in law was matrimony, though these days, as head of his own firm, he tended to be highly selective about which cases he took on, leaving either Lerman or one of their associates to deal with the bulk of marital matters, while he supervised and allowed himself time for his ‘other’ work.

  What he did in that spare, private time, was to help rescue women trapped in deeply unhappy marriages; women who, either for financial or other reasons, saw no way out. They seldom came to him. It was usually Allbeury who, learning of their circumstances in any number of ways, volunteered his services to them.

  He had built up a grapevine of trusted informants over the years, a disparate bunch spread over Greater London. A telephone operator working for the emergency services, a disillusioned social worker, a probation officer, a police constable, a paramedic, a publican and one west London vicar.

  ‘Anyone finds out I’ve passed this on to you,’ the social worker had agitated at one of his early meetings with Allbeury, ‘and I’m fucked.’

  ‘No one’s going to
find out from me,’ Allbeury had told him.

  The case in question had concerned a woman suffering from her husband’s extreme mental cruelty. Social services had been alerted by neighbours because of the wife’s constant loud sobbing, but with no visible bruises or blood, and in the face of her refusal to make any complaint, the social worker had had little choice but to withdraw.

  ‘I feel I’ve abandoned someone in darkest despair.’

  ‘No chance of her leaving?’ Allbeury asked.

  ‘She’s sunk too deep to even try,’ the young man had said. ‘He’s a complete control freak. Won’t let her cash a cheque without his signature, won’t let her have an ATM card, tells her who she can or can’t see.’

  ‘Suicide risk, do you think?’ Allbeury asked.

  ‘I’d say it’s a distinct likelihood.’

  Allbeury had been quiet for a moment.

  ‘Tell me all you know.’

  He generally worked that way, extracted whatever his informant could offer, then used his own methods to verify the woman’s circumstances, after which, if he felt he might be able to help, he made contact via a third party to arrange a first meeting, usually in a public place outside their own environment. Some of the women shied away in alarm, but often they were sufficiently intrigued and bleak enough to take at least that first step.

  They tended, in general, to like and to have faith in Allbeury, who was a gentle, diplomatic interrogator, though some were suspicious, especially when he told them there was no need to concern themselves about money.

  ‘I can’t pay you any other way either,’ more than one had said.

  ‘Nor do I expect you to.’

  All he was offering, he told them, was a way out. An escape. An end to their marriage, if that was what they decided they ultimately wanted. An end to intimidation or raw vulnerability or actual fear.

  ‘But why?’ one distrustful wife had asked. ‘If you say you don’t want money, and I won’t risk applying for Legal Aid, why on earth do you want to help?’

  He had smiled. ‘Call it my missionary complex.’

  ‘Missionaries convert people, don’t they?’

  ‘The only thing I want to convert you to,’ Robin Allbeury had told her, ‘is freedom.’